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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29163024">time does not bring relief</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/cleardishwashers'>cleardishwashers</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:14:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,284</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29163024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/cleardishwashers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he misses the times when it was just him and Danny, scamming their way up and down the coast with no Tess or Isabel or Linus or or any of the rest. Just the two of them, off on whatever job they’d managed to cook up. He doesn’t miss it often, because Tess is fantastic and Isabel is probably one of the better things to happen to him and Linus is the sweetest kid on the face of the earth.</p><p>(But there are moments.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan, Linus Caldwell &amp; Rusty Ryan, Rusty Ryan &amp; Reuben Tishkoff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>time does not bring relief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshowerst/gifts">sunshowerst</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/suibian_distance/gifts">suibian_distance</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>listen. whether or not danny faked his death (he most definitely did) there had to have been a mourning period. and while i think rusty wouldn't believe danny was Actually Dead until like 30 years after the news broke, sean (suibian_distance) sent me the quote "time does not bring relief; you all have lied" and said it was rusty if danny really was dead and that possessed me to start and then never finish this fic until now. technically the quote/msg's implications mean i should've written 30 years into the future. i did not do that because that would imply that danny is Actually Dead and i, unlike robert charles ryan, am not a masochist. sean if ur reading this im going to sue u for emotional damages</p><p>ao3 user sunshowerst id die for u and ur fics thank u for all the amazing new content</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Sometimes he misses the times when it was just him and Danny, scamming their way up and down the coast with no Tess or Isabel or Linus or or any of the rest. Just the two of them, off on whatever job they’d managed to cook up. He doesn’t miss it often, because Tess is fantastic and Isabel is probably one of the better things to happen to him and Linus is the sweetest kid on the face of the earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(But there are moments.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leans against the guardrail. Everything is grey— the ocean in front of him, the cliff behind him, the road below him. To top it off, Oregon is chilly, especially by the sea, especially in the dead of winter, especially when he doesn’t have a jacket. The only one in his car had been one that Danny had not-so-lovingly embroidered for him, so he could go into a funeral home and have a meet-cute and scam that oil baron out of several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, and he had dropped it like a hot poker the minute he’d seen the red stitching. Done by a steady hand, in fits and starts. He’d been driving this exact stretch of highway as Danny had sewn it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(This is one of the moments.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>God, he misses Danny, misses him like he’d miss a limb, and if he could go back to being a drifting twenty-year-old who played the game like he had nothing to lose (he always, always had something to lose, but that something was playing the game right along with him) he’d do it in an instant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He should go back to New York. He really should. His voicemail is full: messages from Reuben telling him </span>
  <em>
    <span>who what when where</span>
  </em>
  <span> regarding the funeral, messages from friends all offering condolences, messages from the hospital updating him on Danny’s condition. Actually, he shouldn’t’ve left New York in the first place. He’d finally gotten into Manhattan after a harrowing two-day drive, and that’s when he’d received the last update. He shouldn’t’ve run. He was </span>
  <em>
    <span>there.</span>
  </em>
  <span> And now he’s missing his partner’s funeral.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought of being there, in that city, where he and Danny had started off— it’s painful. Worse than the way the metal railing cuts through his thin shirtsleeves, the way the wind whistles against his exposed neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s gonna be open casket,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Reuben had told him, voice thick already and made heavier by the shitty audio quality of the phone. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ve seen the body. It’s not… he’s really— kid, you should come.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He pulls his phone out of his pocket. Looks it over. And then winds up his arm and throws it into the dismal, eternal Pacific.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He buys a plane ticket to Europe, and then he buys a shack five miles away from a little English village. He hates England, but Danny’s amenable to it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Was</span>
  </em>
  <span> amenable to it. Not that he’d know about it, even if he were alive, ‘cause this place is the shithole of a sweet spot between in character and too far out of it. It’s where Rusty spends the next six weeks, and when he comes home from a grocery run to find Linus standing awkwardly in the previously-locked doorway, he’s not surprised. He nods pleasantly. Linus commences, then rapidly aborts, an attempt at a hug. Rusty dumps his groceries (two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, and a bottle of whiskey) on the rickety table. “If this is for a job—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Linus says, too quick and too loud. The sound makes Rusty’s perpetual low-grade headache flare, and all he can think is that Danny would know how loud to talk right now. How to force Rusty to sleep, to stop drinking, to get back into the real world. “No, no, nothing like that— I— we— just wanted to see… y’know, how you’re doing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rusty turns around. Truth be told, he’s a little drunk, has been a little drunk since the cliffside in Oregon, and it’s the only tolerable state of existence. When he and Danny were teenagers, wrestling in the New Jersey grass, Danny would eventually drape himself over Rusty’s chest in an effort to claim victory; for the past forty-six days, he’s had the same pressure on his lungs, caused by the same person, as far apart as two of the same sensations can be. He never needed Danny (well, maybe a little— he’s not gonna admit it though, ‘cause he might’ve fallen in love with his best friend but he’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> much of a masochist). But the </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanting</span>
  </em>
  <span> is so strong that he can barely breathe. “You don’t need to worry about me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Linus still looks very worried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, kid, seriously, I’m fine.” Nary a huff at the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>kid.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Danny would probably tell him to exploit the shit out of it. He’s not gonna, though, because if Danny wants him to do something then he’s gonna have to show up and say it. “How’s everyone else doing? How’s Debbie? And Reuben, tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t plan the funeral—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rusty, everybody’s— nobody’s saying you should’ve— I mean, we just wanna know how you’re doing.” </span>
  <em>
    <span>He should be a therapist,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Rusty thinks idly, uncorking the whiskey bottle. He tells Linus that, and gets a vaguely constipated face in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rusty sends a deadpan look right back. “Listen. You can stay here wasting your time, or you can go back stateside and work that job that Reuben’s lining up.” He allows himself the luxury of a smile at Linus’s raised eyebrows. “What, you thought I didn’t know about that? I’m in mourning—” </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe not, maybe he’s alive and I’m looking like a fool for no damn reason—</span>
  </em>
  <span> “not </span>
  <em>
    <span>dead,</span>
  </em>
  <span> kid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah— no, it was just— I mean, it’s just weird. It’s weird, right?” Linus stands there, looking like a puppy in the body of a forty </span>
  <em>
    <span>(forty? fifty? please, God, don’t be thirty— or fifty, please don’t be fifty either)</span>
  </em>
  <span> year old man, and Rusty doesn’t have the energy or the heart to mess with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. It’s weird. Now, are you gonna drink, or are you gonna leave?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Linus chooses to drink. He also chooses to reminisce, but Rusty shuts that shit down quick, because Rusty was there for half the stories and bailed Danny out in the other half and no, actually, he doesn’t feel like making himself even more miserable. He’s compartmentalized it, for the most part, except for the fact that the grief snakes its tendrils under the carefully-built walls and chokes him at least twice an hour, and he’s not gonna deconstruct his last line of defense because Linus feels like being sappy. So they drink in silence for hours, like Rusty and Saul used to do, out on the back porch of the house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t start.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was just gonna say I needed to leave,” Linus huffs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, Rusty feels kinda stupid for that. “Whoops.” He stares directly at the setting sun (they always drove into the setting sun, white stallion traded for a hotwired car; Danny always said that the rumble of the engine knocked loose all the ideas in his brain, and Rusty always said that it was the excessive amount of car naps that did it) and refrains from looking at Linus’s retreating back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He settles farther into the splintering wooden chair. The bottle of whiskey is smooth against his fingers, its contents warm and rough against his throat. He stares off into the middle distance— </span>
  <em>
    <span>rob the British Museum, rob Big Ben, rob the Eye—</span>
  </em>
  <span> and tries not to think about the days before. How he’d trade everything he has now for the missing part of him.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading! feel free to leave a kudos/comment :) u can drop me a line at hawkswithvideocameras on tumblr!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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